Toll Brothers' Results Falter; Will Enter Rental Market

Toll Brothers Inc. (NYSE: TOL) reported first-quarter fiscal 2013 results before markets opened this morning. The luxury home builder reported quarterly diluted earnings per share (EPS) $0.03 on revenues of $424.6 million. In the same period a year ago, Toll Brothers reported an EPS loss of $0.02 on revenue of $321.96 million. First-quarter results also compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $0.10 and $502.17 million in revenue.

The biggest news from Toll Brothers, however, is the company's announcement that it has a developed a "pipeline of sites" on which Toll Brothers will build rental apartments. The company expects to begin generating income from the new rental units in its 2015 fiscal year.

The company's CEO said:

Demand has increased. With our first quarter contracts up 49%, and contracts for the first three weeks of our second quarter up 40% versus comparable periods in FY 2012, it appears that momentum is building. We are continuing to gain market share and see little competition from local private builders. As the Spring selling season kicks off, we are also enjoying increasing pricing power due to the release of pent-up demand colliding with limited supply in the affluent markets where we operate.

That would certainly be a change from the first quarter. For the quarter, the company's average price of homes delivered dropped and the average price of signed contracts also dropped. As a higher-end home builder, Toll Brothers is not getting a lot of help from the increase in first-time buyers, and the company's results emphasize that.

Shares are down 3.4% in premarket trading this morning to $35.65, in a 52-week range of $21.78 to $38.36 Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $36.90 before today's results were announced.